A Look Back: Lex
by JediGurrl
Summary: Bit of history on one of my RP characters. Alexis Fairchilde


"You alright kiddo?"  
  
Shrug, "Just a few scratches, I'll put peroxide on, don't think I'll even need Band-Aids"  
  
Pulling out of one of the three parking spaces next to "Mom & Pop's Grocery, Hardware and Feed" the only store in the little town of Sweetwater North Carolina, "Not exactly what I meant. How're things inside your head?"  
  
Another shrug, fishing around in the glove compartment for the Ziploc bag with the peroxide and gauze pads, then twisting the rearview mirror to work on the scratches on her face and neck, "I just spent half an hour talking to a rosebush. How do you THINK things are inside my head?" Momentary pause to twist the rearview mirror back to its original position before starting on the scratches on her arms and hands, "And you know what? Talking to it, knowing what it was THINKING, that was fine. What bothered me was the fact that it kept trying to give me a friendly grope."  
  
Smirk, gunning the engine, pulling onto the highway, "Well you know Alex, you'll have to get used to that, you are a growing woman."  
  
Dabbing at the leg scratches one-handed long enough to whap him in the back of the head, "I'm also underage."  
  
"And nowhere near as innocent as you tell people you are."  
  
Lopsided smile, putting the peroxide and gauze away, "That's because I live in a jeep and a trailer with you. That'd be enough to corrupt even Mother Theresa."  
  
An actual laugh, "Yeah, you're probably right. I take it this means you're going to be alright?"  
  
Nodding and digging under the seat for a well-worn backpack, "Yeah, if there's one thing I've learned from living with you, besides how to take someone down with one hit, it's to take everything in stride. Don't dwell on it, and don't let it bother you."  
  
Nodding slowly, watching the road, "You're more mature than most girls your age."  
  
Shrugging and pulling a tattered notebook out of the backpack and opening it gingerly, "I've lived through more than most girls my age. Probably more than any of them ever will." Another pause, running her fingers lightly along one of the pencil-drawn portraits in the notebook, "She liked him more than the others, didn't she?"  
  
Momentary pause, glancing sideways at the picture, "What makes you say that?"  
  
"She took more time drawing him, trying to memorize him I think." Another pause, studying the picture more closely, "He looks. haunted. Why is that? I mean, you knew him, right?" Shrug, "I met all of 'em kid. Doesn't mean I knew 'em" Heavy sigh, drumming his fingers on the wheel, "But yeah. Kat did like him best. I think if things'd turned out differently, they'd have settled down, had a couple kids. And the haunted look is because he was a telepath, but he couldn't turn it off. He always 'heard' everyone for about a mile and a half on all sides. Why he rarely spoke."  
  
Nodding slowly, turning pages carefully, "I remember how she used to lull me to sleep, she'd repeat their names and codenames, just so that 'someone else would remember' And I do. Malena Mallory, Nettle. Marcus Mallory, Vapor. LuChat, Tamer. Tiffany Cruz, Tiff. Bryce Shipman, Boost. Edward Fawkes, Link. Dhanie Davis, Glitch. Robert Underhill, Snake. Thomas Fordham, Morph, and Caitlin Fairchilde, Wildekat, my mother." Looking past the notebook now, "I still remember the day she died, you know? Back in the warehouse in Windy Hill Nebraska. She helped me make a fort out of the grates and told me to stay there, with my headphones on until you came to get me. Even with the headphones on I could still hear the fight. Sometimes it was REALLY close. I think even then I knew she wasn't going to survive this one, and I know she knew it. After it had been quiet for a while I peeked out. You saw how that place looked. But imagine that from a six-year-old's point of view. And even at six, I saw how the end had happened. They'd had to resort to using a particle beam on her. But by that point there was only one of them left, so she kept moving towards him. Even with a hole being burned through her chest she still managed to snap his neck."  
  
"You know what the first thing you said to me when I finally got there was? You said, 'someone's going to have to remember her now too.' Then you recited the list, just like you did now, adding her on at the end."  
  
Wiping her eyes self-consciously, "You know what I need now? I need a cookie."  
  
Half smiling, reaching around to get one of the grocery bags off the floor of the backseat and dropping it in her lap, "Knock yourself out kiddo." 


End file.
